


Give Me A Pen

by Flames_and_Jade



Series: Only One For Me - Peterick OTP Prompts Repository [5]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Band, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Eventual Relationships, Fluff, M/M, Soulmates, Writing on Skin, a smidge of angst, cuteness, finding your soulmate, it shows up on your soulmate's skin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 18:41:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8500990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flames_and_Jade/pseuds/Flames_and_Jade
Summary: For the longest time, nothing had shown up on Patrick’s skin. He had wondered if he was the only person in the world without a soulmate, or if his soulmate had an ink allergy [it had happened once or twice in recent memory], or if his soulmate didn’t have anything to say. He felt lonely, especially as he watched others’ skin be colored and marked with the loveliest things.  But one crisp November day…it had started. At first it was just words that didn’t seem to go together. But eventually it had coalesced into…snatches of poetry? Lyrics? Patrick didn’t know…but he started to realize that they were incomplete. That they were pieces that didn’t fit together, but that all belonged to the same puzzle. They had an uncanny beauty, however; a fractured honesty that he admired. Whoever his soulmate was…he or she definitely looked at the world in a different way.OR a soulmate AU where whatever you write on your skin also shows up on your soulmate's.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys!!! Thanks for stopping by! This story is inspired by the OTP prompt listed at the end. I didn't follow it *exactly* but just kept to the general idea. Thanks to @Shattered_Mirrors_and_Lace for looking it over for me!!! I may write a second part, showing the ending from Patrick's POV, with a bit of the afterwards...we'll see =)

_Monday: In my dreams trees grow around the streets you could have knocked me out with a feather_

 

_Tuesday: Where is your boy tonight I hope he is a gentleman I could be an accident but I’m still trying_

 

_Wednesday: Mr. Benzadrine give me a pen_

 

_Thursday: Throwing stones at a glass moon make it stop robbing lips_

 

_Friday: Everybody wants to drive on through the night I’ve traced your shadows on the wall_

 

It had been about four months since the writing started. They had learned about this in primary school, and some people had things start to show up around their fourth year since every child found out about soulmates in their fourth year. They were told that their dominant hand was the opposite as their soulmate…so that if they were right-handed, their soulmate was left-handed. And of course, they learned the cardinal rule of Transcription was to not ask who their soulmate was. For whatever reason, direct questions wouldn’t transfer to your soulmate’s skin…all you got was whatever the person doodled or wrote or said to themselves. It made you almost like cheating on a test you were destined to have to take, and you were being given hints by the professor. You would find the person who doodled or wrote someday…it was destiny. When you did, well, you’d know just a twinge more about them. 

 

For the longest time, nothing had shown up on Patrick’s skin. He had wondered if he was the only person in the world without a soulmate, or if his soulmate had an ink allergy [it had happened once or twice in recent memory], or if his soulmate didn’t have anything to say. He felt lonely, especially as he watched others’ skin be colored and marked with the loveliest things. 

  
But one crisp November day…it had started. At first it was just words that didn’t seem to go together. But eventually it had coalesced into…snatches of poetry? Lyrics? Patrick didn’t know…but he started to realize that they were incomplete. That they were pieces that didn’t fit together, but that all belonged to the same puzzle. They had an uncanny beauty, however; a fractured honesty that he admired. Whoever his soulmate was…he or she definitely looked at the world in a different way. After three months, he started writing down the snatches in an old notebook…and eventually he strung some of them together into a song. The melody flowed to him easily once he read them as a whole, and he smiled when he thought about playing it for his soulmate someday.

 

_~//~_

 

_Monday: Pay parking ticket [a strange drawing of a cop car with wings and a fire hydrant]_

 

_Tuesday: 3:30 study group—bring chips [Doodles of pine trees and a cabin with smoke coming out of the chimney in artistic swirls]_

 

_Wednesday: Gma’s birthday. Code: 3465. White chocolate strawberries [party hats, balloons and a small cake]_

 

_Thursday: Oranges, Milk 1%, applesauce, bread, peanut butter, baby carrots [abstracts swirls amble up his forearm, with little offshoots and whorls]_

 

_Friday: Stupid dentist appt—9:00a [angry teeth and mountains topped with candy]_

 

“I swear, whoever you are, when I meet you I’m going to take you to buy a fucking dayplanner.” 

 

Pete grinned as he muttered the words, no real malice behind them. His soulmate’s words had shown up on his skin since the sixth year in school…snatches of his life penned onto his skin and Transcripted to his own. He smiled sometimes at the sheer _ordinariness_ of some of the tasks— _take out the trash, feed the cat, letter in mail—_ but he’d be lying if he didn’t enjoy the amusing look into his soulmate’s life. Whoever it was, they clearly were a bit scatterbrained, or maybe just too busy for their own good. The notes were varied and sometimes made no sense to Pete. Other times they made his heart ache— _Funeral Friday take flowers—_ and Pete hoped that his soulmate knew that he wasn’t alone in the world. 

 

It wasn’t until he started writing his own words on his own skin that the drawings started. They were beautiful, artistic in a way that seemed almost carefree. Like his soulmate drew them only for the two of them, and didn’t care if anyone else saw. Sometimes they matched the notes written on his skin—a drawing of a dog accompanied _Vet appt mon @2:45—_ and other times they didn’t correlate at all. But they were always so imaginative, Pete would grin like a maniac when they started to blossom on his skin. His favorites, though were the abstract patterns that would slide across his skin like smoke. Zig-zags, curls…they were always beautiful and unique. When there was one he really liked, he would watch it as it seeped into his flesh and then wait a bit longer to make sure when the ink stopped it was really done. Then he would scramble to find a piece of paper and a pen, and trace carefully over the art on his skin. His copy was never as elegant, but it was _theirs_ and he loved them all. 

 

~//~

 

_How cruel is the golden rule, I knew that the lights of the city were too heavy for me, and all the mothers raise their babies to stay away from me_

 

Pete’s mind was spinning…it was a bad day. Thoughts were tumbling through his mind with barely a space between them, howling though the crevices like a mountain wind. The words that he wrote on his skin today were sad, he knew, and he felt bad inflicting them on his soulmate…but today, for the first time, he couldn’t help it. For years he hadn’t written anything on his skin while he was in and out of mental institutions, floating in a drugged haze of medications that were supposed to calm him, help him, wake him up and put him to sleep, and battling with the demons that clawed at his mind whenever the silence became too deafening.

 

But now…he was finally feeling whole, for the first time in his life. Most days, it didn’t feel like there was a song being played in an endless loop in his head, sped up to crazy speeds and screaming at him. Except today it was a bit louder than usual, it meant that he was going to have one of _those_ days. One of those days where everything was just a bit _too_ loud, a bit _too_ fast, a bit _too_ much. But he knew how to handle it…he’d learned, over the years. 

 

Then the familiar writing blossomed across his skin…and the noise stopped, blanketing him with calming silence, and he thanked whatever Gods in the universe had ordained Transcriptum to be part of the bond between soulmates. 

 

For the first time, he knew where his soulmate was going to be. All his other “to do” notes had been nondescript and could have been anywhere. There were hundreds of grocery stores, dentists, veterinarians, and gas stations in Chicago alone, if that’s even where his soulmate lived. But this?

 

_Heart-Shaped Holes @ University Green 8pm [a stack of books, a monster with sad-looking eyes, crossed spears with a dreamcatcher between them]_

 

A quick google search and he knew. He knew at 8 o’clock tonight, his soulmate would be at the Heart-Shape Holes poetry reading at the University Green at SAIC. 

 

Which was still four. fucking. hours. from. now.

 

Pete wasn’t sure if he was going to survive. May as well leave now and be early, just in case.

 

He grabbed his jacket, keys, wallet and phone. He was all the way to the door before an idea struck him, and he ran back into the kitchen for one more item. 

 

~//~

 

Walking around the green, with his hands shoved in his pockets against the cold, Pete was positively jittering with excitement. _Tonight._ Tonight he was going to find his soulmate. Boy or girl, pretty or ugly, tall or short, skinny or fat…who cared? This was the person who would finally understand him, would finally _hear_ what he was trying to say and would give him back the warmed silence he so desperately needed. Who would take his brokenness and make it somehow whole, who would be the perfect match to all that he was missing. 

 

That was why he had never written on his own flesh until he was ready. He remembered sitting in his closet, clutching a felt-tipped pen, wanting to write all the words that were bouncing around in his head like molten lead. But _something_ stopped him. Something he couldn’t name, something he couldn’t even believe that had been able to hold onto as his mind felt like it was crystalizing in his head. But somehow he had—he had never written anything on his left hand, never written a word to his soulmate. It had been a strange mix of self-flagellation and hope—part of his mind screamed that he was a selfish failure for holding back. Maybe his soulmate thought that he was alone in the world, that he had nobody, that Pete hated him, and it was because he was too fucked up to reach out.

 

But in the whirling maelstrom of his mind, he held onto the single hope that sustained him through white hospital sheets, Ativan-induced haze, and his brain screaming at him to just end it all. If he could just get there, if he could just get himself healthy enough…then he’d touch that pen to his left arm. So he would watch the curling, loopy script of his soulmate’s to-do list curl itself around his right hand…and tell himself he _would_ be whole, he _would_ be well, he _would be good enough_ for his soulmate. Someday.

 

Today was that day. 

 

Glancing down, he looked at the last-minute addition he had scribbled onto his left hand an hour ago. It was a drawing he had been doodling for years in his notebooks…and he was pretty sure nobody else in the world had ever thought of this design, because it was weird and _his_. After all, nobody else was his brand of crazy, right? 

 

College kids began to filter into the large courtyard at about 7:30. Pete kept eyes peeled, searching frantically for his words, for his drawing on every person’s right hand. He wound his way through the crowd, desperation starting to gnaw at his insides as the event progressed. Half of his mind couldn’t help but listen to the poetry being read with passion and eloquence by a tall dark guy and a blonde girl. It was beautiful, something about life being a journey, about pine trees and fresh air, about beauty and love. But then the selection was over…and it was over. He had lost his chance. 

 

He felt like he couldn’t breathe… _no! Not after all this time, not after everything I fucking slogged through to_ finally _write to my soulmate…I can’t have missed them, I can’t—_ He decided then and there he was going to run up to the stage and hold up his hand and show everyone and beg for them to _look,_ to see if they had his words and his drawing on their skin. Stumbling, he pushed past the bodies that _weren’t. his. soulmate._ He broke through the edge of the crowd, stumbling and falling to his knees in front of the stage…

 

“Umm…hey guys.” A voice cut through the panic, soft and low and _gorgeous._ Pete looked up, and saw a young man standing behind the microphone, a guitar slung over his shoulder. “My name’s Patrick. Nate and Rebecca wanted to end the night with a song, and they asked me to play something for you.” He blushed and something about the color suffusing his pale cheeks made Pete forget about his fear and tethered him to the cold ground. “This is something I’ve been working on…for the last few months. Nobody’s heard it yet, but hopefully it isn’t totally awful.” With a smile, the young man pulled a pick from his pocket and began to strum. The melody was simple but with a complexity that spoke of restraint rather then starkness. 

 

But when he began to sing, Pete felt his heart start to pound. The words…they were _his words._ The words he scribbled on his hand when he couldn’t find paper, the words that seemed to pound at his mind like waves on a seawall. Parts of his soul that never seemed to _quite_ make sense…but they were _his._ And this guy— _Patrick_ —had made them into something. It’s like he had known what Pete was trying to say with the broken sentences and disjointed pairings and then made them _beautiful._

 

Pete couldn’t pull his eyes away from creamy pale skin, longish brown hair hidden under a fedora, blocky glasses and a cardigan. His fingers danced over the strings with delicate grace, eyes closed as he sang the words like they meant something. 

 

_“Born under a bad sign, but you saved my life_

_That night on the roof of your hotel_

_"Cross my heart and hope to die_

_Splintered from the headboard in my eye"_

_Photo-proofed kisses I remembered so well_

 

_Trade baby blues for wide eyed browns_

_I sleep with your old shirts_

_And walk through this house in your shoes,_

_You know it's strange_

_It's a strange way of saying_

_That I know I'm supposed to love you_

_I'm supposed to love you”_

 

When the song was over, Patrick gave a bashful smile and stepped away from the microphone. He turned and walked off the stage, his right hand coming up to push up his glasses…and Pete saw it. 

 

Like a spell had been broken, he leapt to his feet and ran towards the steps. Everything narrowed down to _PatrickPatrickPatrick_ and his _hand…_

 

Then Pete was in front of him, tears running from his eyes as the last line of the song echoed through his head, falling from his lips before he could even think of something else to say. 

 

“Wait, please…I’m supposed to love you.” 

 

Patrick’s wide eyes met his, shock plain on his face. “Ex-excuse me? Who are you?” 

 

Pete reached down and grabbed at him, holding their opposite hands next to each other. Pete’s words were scribbled on Patrick’s hand, right next to the Bat-heart that he had drawn. He looked back up at his soulmate, noting for the first time the hazel that ringed his pupils before melting into sky blue, the lush fullness of his lips, the shape of his cheekbones. Shock painted Patrick’s face as he stared first at their hands, and then his eyes came back up to meet Pete’s, something like awe dawning over his features like sunrise. 

 

Pete wanted to scream, wanted to cry, wanted to fall to his knees and wrap his arms around Patrick’s legs and never let him go. But instead he said the only words that made sense, the truth that he’d known his whole life. 

 

“I’m yours.” 

 

**Author's Note:**

> OTP Prompt: Soulmate AU where when you write something on your skin with a pen/marker/whatever, it will show up on your soulmate's skin as well.
> 
> Imagine having a super artistic soulmate who draws flowers and designs and really beautiful patterns all over their arms and person 2 just sits there and watches the little lines appear on their arms and they can't stop smiling and its their favorite part of the day.
> 
> Imagine person 1 being super forgetful so they scribble down all the places their appointments are and person 2 tries to decipher them and figure out where they're at and they meet and they see their writing on their hand from across the waiting room/coffee shop/etc.. and they scramble to find a pen and write 'found you' on the back of their hand and person 1 sees it and they lock eyes and....
> 
> Prompt Link: http://otp-lifestyle.tumblr.com/post/151516800336/pxstergirl-soulmate-au-where-when-you-write
> 
> Also, credit where credit is due...the song Patrick sings is Fall Out Boy's "G.I.N.A.S.F.S" from "Infinity On High," and Pete's writings are lines from various FOB songs.


End file.
